


Something 'Bout Lonely Nights (and My Lipstick on Your Face)

by NoelleAngelFyre



Category: Beetlejuice (1988), Beetlejuice (TV 1989), Beetlejuice - All Media Types
Genre: Cartoon-Movieverse, Dysfunctional Relationship, Established Relationship, F/M, First Kisses, Life with a Poltergeist, Morbid Ideas of Romance, Two crazy people being crazy about each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 11:53:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9548006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoelleAngelFyre/pseuds/NoelleAngelFyre
Summary: Whatever it is they've got going between them, she likes it.  A lot.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Title is taken from Lady Gaga's "You and I". Please enjoy. :)

She wakes up to pale ribbons of sunlight streaming through parted curtains and greets the dawn with a smile, because she knows it means a new day has begun. And she never really knows what a new day will bring.

She rolls out of bed, the whispery brushes of her spider-web canopy clinging to the extra-large T-shirt she’s slept in—the one that Dad bought her from an airport during one of his business trips; it’s much too big for her but there’s something about an abstract painting replicated on fabric that greatly appeals to her. Her black hair is a tussled mess, there’s mascara smeared across her temples and down one cheek because she forgot to take it off last night, and her legs are bare past the thigh. There’s a minute of peace (literally, sixty seconds, if not less), and then she feels an approving leer running over her figure. She looks to the left, to her mirror, and he’s there.

Some days, he’s in the black-and-white pinstripe. Other days, he’s wearing some mismatched assembly with a hat bearing the grime-streaked title of “Guide”—there’s a story there, and she’ll ask about it one day—titled askew on his head. She likes the black and white best.

“Morning, B.J.” She says, voice still heavy with sleep.

“And not a bad view, to start.” He grins wickedly. And she just smirks, grabs a blanket, and tosses it over the mirror while she gets dressed for the day.

***

Rare is the day when B.J. actually behaves himself. If he is, it’s because he’s sulking somewhere on the other side after they got in a fight—and they fight more often than not—and he swore off any type of reconciliation unless she apologized.

He always apologizes first, and they both know he’ll be the first to crack. But she lets him have the illusion of her coming to him with pleading tears for forgiveness. It’s an empty illusion, bordering on _delusion_ , because their fights are never resolved with tears or legitimate apologies. She lets him stew for a couple days—a week, if it was a particularly enthusiastic disagreement—and then he shows up in her mirror one day or another.

“You gonna drop the B-word or what, Babes?” he says, like he hasn’t done anything wrong. She rolls her eyes, calls him a jerk (or something more colorful, if he really ticked her off), and then lets him out. She always forgives, eventually forgets, and life goes on because she can’t imagine life without him in it.

When they aren’t fighting, he usually is bringing them dangerously close to an argument. More than once, it occurs to her that protesting, loudly and with varying degrees of civility, about the things he does—frequently and without shame—is a wasted breath. This is what he does, she tells herself. He is what he is. Why bother trying to change him?

And then he turns Delia’s spaghetti dish into a bowl of worms (very alive, very animated, tangled-together-in-a-wriggling-mess, worms) or he blows dust over the floors that Lydia just spent two hours scrubbing to her stepmother’s satisfaction. And there’s the time he pulled the carpet runner out from under Dad’s feet, midway down the stairs, and almost gave her father a concussion. Twice, he’s hidden her schoolbooks in the attic, discovered only after she had to explain away the absence of her required homework to unimpressed teachers. Such behavior resulted in a very unpleasant parent-teacher conference—“She could stand to be a bit more focused in her academics,” the Science teacher told her father. She’s threatened to break her mirror with a baseball bat more than once.

The list goes on, and while she knows it’s an uphill battle and she should quit while she’s ahead, he still manages to worm his way under her skin and push all her buttons.

“Ever think about finding some other poor idiot to annoy?” she grumbles one night, determinedly staring at the TV instead of him even though the only thing on is some ridiculously cheap horror flick that she could care less about. “Someone who’ll put up with your crap and not think about killing you twice over.”

He materializes on her bed, legs stretching out with lazy satisfaction, and shoots her a grin. “Ain’t nobody like you, Babes.”

She huffs a sigh, then rests her head on his legs and pretends that’s not the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to her.

***

“Lydia, dear,” Delia beams while pushing her forward, “this is Ronald. He lives in that lovely little house down the street—you know, the one with that darling little poodle?”

“Mm hm.” She nods, baring her teeth in a tight grin. Last month, B.J. made some uncivilized plans (namely, hat-making) for that ‘darling little poodle’ after its’ nonstop barking interrupted their card game; at the moment, she’d rather have B.J. follow through with his plan on the darling little dog’s owner. Though she’s not sure Ronald would make a particularly fetching hat.

Ronald takes her on a date. He’s the fifth boy in as many months to take her on a date—Lydia suspects Delia is paying them to do so, since she goes to school with several of these boys and not a single one previously showed interest in her—and she starts silently ticking off all the different ways this one can be scared off.

The first one was a major phobic of insects (she insisted on going to a new entomology exhibit at the museum; he ran for the nearest trash can after five minutes). Then there was Jeremy, who took her to the visiting carnival and won her a giant stuffed chicken (she had a cookout over the backyard fire pit, two days later). Barney and Peter were both run-of-the-mill “dinner and a movie” guys (she begged Barney for the new slasher film; he lasted half an hour). So now, there’s Ronald. Ronald is on a budget, so Delia scoots Dad out of the house and leaves the two of them with a fresh box of pizza, freshly-made salad from the garden, and some candles.

Two hours later, the food is eaten, the dishes are put away, and they’re sitting on the couch. She’s found Ronald is a nice guy. The kind of homegrown niceness that girls fawn over and waste dreams fantasizing about. He’s got a strong jaw, a nice mouth, and good teeth. She shows him the spiders she’s growing for a school project, and he doesn’t flinch or run out the door screaming. He does ask why she does it; why she likes spiders and studies cobwebs and wears so much black. He asks a lot of questions.

“I just do.” She says, and shrugs.

“Yeah,” he says, “but _why_?”

Her father and Delia come home after an hour of answering questions that he asks all over again, and Delia waggles her eyebrows at Lydia while showing Ronald out the door. She retreats upstairs before any more questions can be asked, because if she hears the question ‘Why’ one more time, she’ll scream. And curse. And maybe throw some things. Or maybe not. Throwing things around isn’t really her thing.

She whispers B.J.’s name under her breath, en route to her bedroom. When she gets inside and closes the door behind her, he’s sulking on her mattress edge. The scowl is almost comical, such exaggerated proportions, and she wonders how he managed to get his eyebrows scrunched so deeply together.

He starts griping at her before she can get the first word (but then again, he always has to get the first punch). Grumbles about Delia parading the “cruds of the crop” in and out of the house, then growls at Lydia for letting them paw at her and cart her all over town when he isn’t even allowed to come along and make a good time into a “really good time” or even a “great time”—depending on how much havoc he decides to inflict on the poor unsuspecting soul—and instead she leaves him here to stew with not so much as a—

And then he finally shuts up, because her fingers are in his lapels and her legs are bumping his knees and her lips are on his. He tastes like ash, and stale booze, and dirt, and something else she doesn’t really want to think about. After a few minutes—because the taste isn’t terrible and even though his lips are dry and chaff hers and he’s too stunned to remember to respond, she likes kissing him (she likes it a lot, actually) and doesn’t want to end this before it’s absolutely necessary—she leans back and cocks an eyebrow at him.

“Poor B-man,” she croons, smirking in the way she knows he _really_ likes to stare at, “did I kiss it all better?”

“Not quite yet.” he growls, something dangerous and exciting in his hollowed-out gaze, and he drags her back without resistance on her part. He pushes these flimsy boundaries between them a little further: pulling her into his lap and delving one hand in her hair until it’s loose and messy in his grip. One kiss bleeds into another, and another, and another…

She loses track pretty quickly.

Later, as she loiters on the cusp of sleep, B.J. makes a quip about how she can go on lots more dates, if that’s how the evening is going to end. His hair is a bigger mess than usual from her fingers combing through it, and he’s got black smudges along his mouth and chin and one side of his neck from her lipstick. She says nothing (mustn’t encourage him too much, after all), but can’t bite down a tiny smile at how incredibly pleasant the idea sounds.

***

She enjoys the chaos. She wakes up every morning with a bubbling sense of anticipation for what the day might bring. She likes (really, really, likes) the craziness of her life—the good, the bad, and everything in between—because it never gets old and even the fights are so very worth it after the fact because she knows they’ll always make up.

But her love is for the quiet moments: the late nights when they go out to the cemetery just over the hill and find a good spot between the tombstones to stretch out on the dead grass. She lays with her head on his belly, staring up at the ink-black sky and basking in the moonlight. The grass pricks lightly through her clothes, an owl announces itself from the nearby tree, and the air is perfumed with the bitter tinge of a cheap cigarette. Every now and then, she’ll see a smoke ring pass through and dissipate in the air. He’ll go through about five cigarettes before the night is out.

Sometimes, without a word, she’ll lift one hand and run a lazy path along his suit—the fabric is stiff, well-worn, and stained with God-knows-what, and there’s always a myriad of textures under her fingertips—until she feels a chilled palm take hold and they both rest on the cool dirt.

Sometimes, though she never really knows who moves first, their fingers will entwine and stay that way all night. Those are the moments she looks forward to the most.


End file.
